Current Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) vessel detection systems are sensor-specific, resolution-specific, or imaging mode-specific. Also, no current vessel detection system provides all possible features for each detected vessel (i.e. length, width, heading, speed, etc). Such features allow the user to more accurately fuse automated SAR ship detection results with other sources of information based on ship type, length, width, etc, as well as to classify the possible type of vessel detected. A method is needed that can quickly and automatically detect all vessels in SAR imagery with minimal false alarms, extract relevant information about each vessel (length, width, heading, class), and accurately report these results to users.